Case Study: When the Twitterverse Turns on You

Charlene Thompson reached for her phone on the nightstand. It was still before 6:00am, so the iPhone’s glow was the only light in the room. Her husband, James, turned over and groaned.

“That’s a horrible habit,” he said. “You should always have coffee before checking your inbox.”

“This is important, honey,” she whispered. “I need to see what’s happening with the contest.”

(Editor’s Note: This fictionalized case study will appear in a forthcoming issue of Harvard Business Review, along with commentary from experts and readers. If you’d like your comment to be considered for publication, please be sure to include your full name, company or university affiliation, and e-mail address.)

Charlene was the head of public relations for Canadian Jet. Yesterday, with the help of the company’s PR firm, Wrigley & Walters, the airline had launched its first Twitter contest: The person who posted the most creative tweet using the hashtag #CanJetLuxury would win two round-trip tickets to any of the company’s destinations.

For Charlene, who had led the airline’s communications for 15 years, this campaign was critical. Six months before, a third of Canadian Jet’s fleet had been grounded for a week owing to some engine safety concerns, causing a slew of cancellations and delays. There had also been some negative press about the airline’s approach to labor relations following a threatened strike by the ground crews. The team at Wrigley & Walters had designed this campaign to restore Canadian Jet’s image as a preferred carrier.

“Shoot. This isn’t good,” Charlene said as she scrolled through an endless string of tweets.

“What? It’s not catching on?” James asked groggily.

“Just the opposite. But not in a good way.” She read a few of the tweets: “‘Getting to my destination without the engine catching fire #CanJetLuxury’; ‘Being stranded 3,000 miles from my family for two days straight #CanJetLuxury’; #CanJetLuxury is getting away with not paying employees fairly.'”

“Ouch,” James said.

This is completely backfiring, Charlene thought as she got out of bed.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“I need to call Jerry.”

7:30am

Jerry Schneider, Canadian Jet’s CEO, was tapping his fingers on his desk while he and Charlene waited for the others to arrive. He hadn’t said much yet, but Charlene could tell that he was feeling the stress, too.

Tim Powell, Charlene’s director of social media, showed up with Andrea Kemp, the company’s account manager from Wrigley & Walters. Both looked flustered.

“Sorry,” Tim said. “We had trouble getting Andrea’s pass.”

Andrea shook Jerry’s hand and started speaking before she sat down.

“OK, so we knew this was a risk going in, right? People love to complain on the internet, especially when they can essentially be anonymous like this.” Charlene knew Andrea’s fast talking wasn’t a sign of nerves. She was just the sort of person who was energized by a crisis. And she was right — throughout the planning process, she’d reminded Charlene and her team that critics could use social media campaigns like this one to bash the company. JPMorgan Chasehad been a recent victim of hashtag backlash after launching a well-meaning Twitter Q&A, she told them, and she had sent around a Forbes.com article about how one of McDonald’s campaigns has resulted in a “bashtag.” She reminded them now of these other cases.

“I’m not sure knowing we’re in good company is any comfort right now,” Jerry said. He asked Tim for an update.

“They’re still coming in: 200 more tweets with the CanJetLuxury hashtag since 6am. The majority are fine — good, even — but there are some doozies.”

Jerry rolled his eyes. “I don’t even want to hear any more.”

“And we’ve started trending, which isn’t great, given the circumstances,” said Tim.

“How do we stop trending?” Jerry asked. The CEO was three decades removed from the Millennials, and although he did his best to keep up with social media, he wasn’t as savvy as Tim or Charlene.

“We could change the hashtag and get people to start using a new one,” Tim suggested. “Other companies have done that.”

“And it’s worked,” Andrea noted. “By focusing people on the new hashtag, you draw attention away from the one that was causing problems, and people are less inclined to throw in their own witty insults. It could take a few days for the old hashtag to peter out, though.”

“That sounds like a solution,” Jerry said. “That way we save the contest and let this whole mess blow over.”

“Or we could just end the contest altogether,” Charlene offered.

“Yes, you might remember that’s what JPMorgan did,” Andrea said. “When people hijacked the hashtag to tweet about ‘capitalist pigs,’ they canceled the Q&A.”

“And they came off looking like the arrogant jerks everyone was claiming them to be,” Tim said.

Andrea nodded. “Let’s not jump the gun here. Most of these tweets are positive. They say some lovely things about customers’ experiences with Canadian Jet. If you cancel, you may end up alienating the people who sent in genuine entries and are hoping for those round-trip tickets. It may be better to ignore the bashes and focus on the good publicity you’re getting.”

“And when the press starts calling?” Charlene asked. She worried it was just a matter of time before she would have to start fielding questions.

“You take the high road and say how pleased you are with the positive responses,” Andrea suggested.

“So far I’m not loving any of these options,” Jerry said.

Tim cleared his throat. “We could apologize. It’s worked for us in the past.” Three years back, one of the operations VPs had come up with the idea to make buttons with “We’re sorry” in big black letters and have flight attendants, pilots, and airport staff wear them whenever a flight was delayed or canceled, even if it wasn’t the airline’s fault. Customer response to the tactic had been overwhelmingly positive. It had even helped win the airline an industry customer service award.

“But what exactly are you apologizing for here?” Andrea asked. “You just launched a contest. You didn’t exploit political events like Kenneth Cole did or pull a Home Depot and send out a picture that people thought was racist. It makes sense that those companies said they were sorry, but you haven’t done anything wrong.”

“That’s not what these people think,” Charlene said, pointing to her iPad. She read a few of the latest tweets. “‘Arriving a day late to your daughter’s wedding #CanJetLuxury,’ ‘Screwing your workforce #CanJetLuxury.'”

“Enough,” groaned Jerry, holding his head in his hands. The room was silent.

“I’m willing to take a stab at an apology,” Charlene said. “I’m not sure exactly what it’s going to say, but give me an hour.”

8:30am

Charlene stared at the blank Word document on her screen. She typed:

“On behalf of Canadian Jet, I’d like to apologize for the feelings that this contest brought up.”

She deleted it.

“We at Canadian Jet are sorry for disappointing our customers. We’re committed to…”

“That doesn’t work, either,” she said out loud to her computer, pressing the backspace button. She tried a more direct approach.

“We’re sorry that our planes sometimes break, that you think we treat our employees unfairly, and that you don’t like our contest.”

Her assistant poked her head in the door, “I’ve got Carrie Schultz on the line.” This ought to be fun, Charlene thought as she picked up the phone.

Carrie, a blogger for PR News, explained that she was working on a piece about social media gaffes and wondered if Charlene wanted to comment on the crisis in progress.

“I wouldn’t call it a ‘crisis.’ A handful of people poking fun at your business doesn’t constitute a crisis.”

“Are you willing to explain on the record why you’re ignoring the responses? You keep sending out tweets as if everything is going smoothly.”

Charlene quickly pulled up the airline’s Twitter feed and saw that a tweet had gone out at 8:00am: “Keep the responses coming. At this rate, it’s going to take years to judge this contest!” She put her phone on mute and yelled to her assistant to get Tim.

She could hear him running down the hallway. He looked ashen reading the tweet on Charlene’s screen. Charlene pointed to the receiver and mouthed “Carrie Schultz.”

She took the phone off mute. “We’re not ready to comment just yet, Carrie.”

Tim was about to say something when Andrea cut in. “I’m sorry. This is our agency’s fault. We wrote the tweets yesterday and scheduled them to go out throughout the day. We were trying to save some time.”

“Jerry, we’ve turned off the automatic tweets,” Charlene assured him. “But still — we’ve got to figure out what we’re doing. And fast.”

“What about the apology?” Tim asked.

“Andrea was right,” Charlene sighed. “It’s hard to know exactly what we’re apologizing for. The only thing I can think to say is, ‘Sorry we’ve disappointed you in various ways over the past ten years.'”

“What’s wrong with that?” Tim asked. Charlene looked over at him to see if he was joking. He wasn’t smiling.

“We look like chumps, that’s what,” Jerry said, his voice rising.

“So, are we pulling it?” Tim asked. They all looked at Jerry.

“What else have we got for this year?”

“This is our biggest social media campaign,” Charlene replied. “We’ve planned a few other things, but nothing on this scale.” She tried not to look at Andrea. Her agency was as much on the line as Canadian Jet.

“This is not a lost cause,” Andrea said, still utterly composed. “It’s been less than 24 hours. I’m telling you, this thing may die down as quickly as it heated up.”

Jerry sat down heavily in his chair. “I know we normally take your firm’s advice on these things, Andrea. You’re the experts here, but you’re also the ones who got us into this mess.” He turned to Charlene. “As our spokesperson, I’d like you to make the call.”

Question: Should Canadian Jet cancel the contest?

Please remember to include your full name, company or university affiliation, and e-mail address.

Jana Seijts is a lecturer in management communication at Ivey Business School at Western University in Ontario.